The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter, American dramatic film, released in 1978, that focused on the devastating effects of the Vietnam War on the young American men sent to fight in it. The emotionally shattering movie, cowritten and directed by Michael Cimino, won five Academy Awards, including those for best picture and best editor.

The film opens at the end of a shift in a steel mill in Clairton, Pennsylvania. A group of workers—Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and Steven (John Savage)—join with their friends Stan (John Cazale) and Axel (Chuck Aspegren) and go to the bar owned by John (George Dzundza). Steven is about to marry his pregnant girlfriend, Angela (Rutanya Alda), and Michael, Nick, and Steven are then going to ship out to Vietnam. Nick’s girlfriend, Linda (Meryl Streep), one of the bridesmaids, takes breakfast to her drunken father before leaving for the wedding, and he knocks her down. She later secures permission to stay in the home that Michael and Nick share during their deployment. The wedding takes place in a Russian Orthodox church, and the reception is held in an American Legion hall. Linda catches the bridal bouquet, and Nick proposes to her but seems surprised when she accepts the proposal. Early the next morning, all the men except Steven go on a deer-hunting trip organized by Michael and Nick. Michael, who follows his own strict code of honour regarding hunting, kills a buck with a single shot, and the men return to John’s bar with their trophy.

The movie’s next act begins in the midst of a brutal battle in a small village in Vietnam. Michael is among the small group of Americans defending the village from North Vietnamese attackers. American helicopters arrive with reinforcements, which include Nick and Steven. The Americans are outnumbered, however, and all three are taken prisoner. The prisoners of war (POWs) are held in bamboo cages partially submerged in rat-infested waters, and their captors pull them up to force them to play Russian roulette. When Steven is made to play, he nervously shifts the angle of the gun as he pulls the trigger, and the bullet that is fired only grazes his scalp. He is placed in a cage. Michael, who has thought of a way to escape, insists that he and Nick play against each other, but with three bullets rather than the standard single one in the chamber. After Michael and Nick survive three rounds, Michael turns the gun on the game’s ringleader, and he and Nick seize the weapons of their other captors and kill them. Michael and Nick free Steven from the cage and escape into the river, holding on to a floating log. An American helicopter attempts to rescue them, but only Nick is able to climb into the chopper. Steven falls back into the river, and Michael drops back down to save him. Steven’s legs are shattered in the fall, and Michael carries him on his back. Sometime later, the psychologically damaged Nick is released from a military hospital in Saigon and walks through the city, searching for Michael. Outside a gambling den, Nick meets Julien Grinda (Pierre Segui), a Frenchman who insists that Nick enter the building, in which young Vietnamese men are playing Russian roulette for money. Michael is in the crowd, though Nick does not notice him. Nick grabs a gun from one of the contestants and places it against his own head, drawing an empty chamber. He leaves with Grinda, and Michael is unable to catch up with him.

Michael returns to Clairton but avoids the hero’s welcome that the town has planned for him and instead checks into a motel. He later returns to his home, where Linda now lives, and they come to find comfort in each other’s company. He learns from Angela that Steven is in a local Veterans Administration hospital. Steven has had both legs and his left arm amputated. He tells Michael that he receives bundles of cash from an unknown source in Saigon every month, and Michael surmises that Nick is the benefactor. Michael persuades Steven to leave the hospital and takes him home to Angela. Michael then returns to Saigon in search of Nick. He finds Grinda, who takes him to a gambling den where Nick is playing Russian roulette. Nick does not recognize Michael. Michael pays to enter the game and keeps talking to Nick, trying to jog his memory. Nick at last appears to remember, but when he takes the next shot in the game, the bullet is in the chamber, and he kills himself. The film’s final scene is a breakfast in John’s bar following Nick’s funeral. The mourners, including Steven, Angela, and Linda, sing “God Bless America.”

The Deer HunterRobert De Niro (left) and John Savage in The Deer Hunter (1978).Universal Pictures Company, Inc.

Although many critics praised The Deer Hunter as a masterpiece, others protested that the film’s depiction of Vietnamese characters was vicious and sadistic and declared that the movie’s central metaphor of Russian roulette was particularly dishonest, as there were no instances of Russian roulette as a means of torture in any of the war’s records. Cimino wrote the story with Deric Washburn, extrapolating from an earlier story by Louis Garfinkle and Quinn Redeker about gamblers going to Las Vegas to play Russian roulette. The movie was the last film appearance of Cazale, who died of cancer shortly after the completion of filming. The Deer Hunter was named in 1996 to the National Film Registry.